Alipay in China

时间：2018/6/4 14:14:17 作者：learnmorechina 来源： 查看：87 评论：0

Alipay is a very popular payment option in Asia and part of the Alibabagroup. It's a payment option that works like many other "eWallet" services, where you add payment methods (cards or bank accounts) to your Alipay account, and can then process orders using them.

Chinese consumers can keep a virtual wallet in Yuan, and make payments in foreign currencies. Alipay looks after the exchange and merchants are paid in their home currency. This opens the door for the growing Chinese middle class to get their hands on international name brands.

Alipay (Chinese: 支付宝) is a third-party mobile and online payment platform, established in Hangzhou, China in February 2004 by Alibaba Group and its founder Jack Ma. In 2015, Alipay moved its headquarters to Pudong, Shanghai, although its parent company Ant Financial remains Hangzhou-based.

Alipay overtook PayPal as the world's largest mobile payment platform in 2013.In the fourth quarter of 2016, Alipay had a 54% share of China's US$5.5 trillion mobile payment market, by far the largest in the world, although its share fell from 71% in 2015 as its rival Tencent's WeChat Pay was rapidly catching up.

In 2003, Taobao launched the first Alipay service.The PBOC, China's central bank, issued licensing regulations in June 2010 for third-party payment providers. It also issued separate guidelines for foreign-funded payment institutions.Because of this, Alipay, which accounts for half of China's non-bank online payment market, was restructured as a domestic company controlled by Alibaba CEO Jack Ma in order to facilitate the regulatory approval for the license.The 2010 transfer of Alipay's ownership was controversial, with media reports in 2011 that Yahoo! and Softbank (Alibaba Group's controlling shareholders) were not informed of the sale for nominal value. Chinese business publications Century Weekly criticised Ma, who stated that Alibaba Group's board of directors was aware of the transaction.The incident was criticised in foreign and Chinese media as harming foreign trust in making Chinese investments.The ownership dispute was resolved by Alibaba Group, Yahoo!, and Softbank in July 2011.

In 2013 Alipay launched a financial product platform called Yu'ebao (余额宝). As of June 2013 the company still had what it called "a minor paperwork problem" with the China Securities Regulatory Commission, but the company said that they planned to expand the product while these are sorted out.

In 2015, Alipay's parent company was re-branded as Ant Financial Services Group.

In 2017, Alipay unveiled their facial recognition payment service.

Now,many people in China use Alipay or wechat pay, not only in online shopping, but also in many shops and markets. Will you also use Alipay when in China?